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Marvel's Jeph Loeb Talks 'Ultimate Spider-Man' Animated Series

Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man is the comic book that revitalized Marvel Comics – due, in large part, to its modern take on Marvel’s most popular character and the various endearing, relatable, and colloquial characterizations, courtesy of Bendis.

Fans of the comic – though disappointed that the top-notch Spectacular Spider-Man animated series was canceled – were incredibly excited when they learned that Ultimate Spider-Man was being adapted as an animated series to air on Disney XD. In an issue of Disney 23 Magazine, Marvel Executive Vice President Jeph Loeb discussed his excitement for the upcoming show and what we have to look forward to.

Loeb talked about some of the writers who will be working on the show, including industry auteurs Brian Michael Bendis and Paul Dini (Batman: The Animated Series):

"The thing that I'm most immediately excited about, because it's in production, is Ultimate Spider-Man. It's the first Marvel-produced Spider-Man series. We have an incredible writing staff including Brian Michael Bendi, who has written every single issue of Ultimate Spider Man – more than 150 issues in 10 years – Paul Dini, and Man of Action."

Man of Action, for those not previously aware, is a “development/production house dedicated to writing, conceptualizing, and developing work of exceptional quality, commercial viability, and explosive creativity.” And they created Ben Ten. So that’s a thing, I guess.

Art from Ultimate Comics Spider-Man courtesy of David Lafuente

Jeph Loeb also talked about Marvel’s ongoing philosophy with regard to animated shows:

“What we're doing is putting together the coolest Spider-Man animated series that we can. This is a first step in what we want to define as Marvel animation and will capture the look and feel of the comics as the movies have captured the look and feel of the comics."

Loeb even drew a connection between the animated series and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man film, which looks to be heavily inspired by the Ultimate Spider-Man comic series:

"Like the comic and the upcoming movie. We're dealing with Peter Parker in high school, trying to balance his life between being a normal teenager and becoming the ultimate Spider-Man. This is the story of Spider-Man trying to become the best hero that he can. And work his way up to the major league guys like Captain American and Iron Man and The Avengers. Fans of Marvel will be very happy with what we're putting together. And 2012 is when they're going to get to see this incredibly awesome stuff that we've been working on.”

Check out the promo poster for the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon, which gives us our first look at the visual style for the show (click to enlarge):

At first glance, the image looks pretty stylistically generic, but that could just be due to the minimalistic nature of the promo image. There have been three main artists throughout the nearly 200-issue run of the Ultimate Spider-Man comic: Mark Bagley, Stuart Immonen (Fear Itself), and David Lafuente. Of the three artists, the above image most resembles Lafuente, if not nearly as bombastic, colorful, and, in a word, awesome.